In response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing yet another disappointing monthly jobs report, which showed job creation numbers coming in lower than expected and included further downward revisions to prior months, Fox News and Fox Business immediately tried to pivot away from malaise in the labor market by elevating a lesser known forecast model that recently showed a spike in expected economic growth.
On Friday, the BLS released its employment situation summary for December 2025, which showed the economy adding just 50,000 jobs in the last month of the year and the unemployment rate ticking down slightly to 4.4%, as well as downward revisions amounting to 76,000 fewer jobs added in October and November than previously reported. The report's headline figures came in well short of most expectations, which predicted 70,000 to 73,000 jobs added in December.
The jobs report showed a gain of just 584,000 jobs in 2025, which, as Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long noted, is “the worst year for job gains outside of a recession since 2003.” Annual job creation last year stands in stark contrast to 2024, when the economy added roughly 2 million jobs at a pace of around 168,000 per month. Average monthly job creation in 2025 was roughly half of the Congressional Budget Office’s projection for 2025.
Long also noted that “nearly 85% of the job gains happened by April,” with “little hiring the rest of the year” following Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement in early April. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers pointed out that since April, Canada has had nearly double the U.S.’s average monthly job growth, even though Canada’s population is less than one-eighth that of the U.S. Indeed, job creation data clearly shows a huge dropoff following the announcement of tariffs in April:
Undaunted by the flood of experts highlighting concerns about the December jobs report and overall labor market, several Fox programs simply pivoted away from the matter.
On Mornings with Maria, former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore pointed to a constantly fluctuating model of economic activity produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta called GDPNow to claim “this is an absolutely booming economy right now.” (The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, which can swing wildly from day to day, does not necessarily forecast a “booming economy”; earlier this week it projected GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2025 would be around 2.7% but the model was revised sharply upward, largely to account for changes in how tariffs apply to gold. The GDPNow model has already been revised slightly down again, while other GDP forecasts — such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Nowcast model — show fourth quarter GDP estimates still around 2.6%.)
Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, prior to the report’s release, suggested that President Donald Trump could successfully “run [on] the economy” in the midterm elections this year, adding: “If the job numbers are expected to be reasonably strong. … If things start trending that direction, you could see a break with tradition” of the governing party suffering midterm election losses. Later, Fox host Carley Shimkus’ report on the jobs situation compared the December jobs figures to a lower projection of 60,000, likely from Reuters, rather than the higher expectations of 70,000 from Bloomberg or 73,000 from Dow Jones (a company that is part of Fox chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch’s media empire) to spin the miss as small as possible.
On America’s Newsroom, Fox Business correspondent Grady Trimble reported that “the White House says it’s still a good jobs report overall,” citing in part shoddy figures for “native-born” workers.
Later on America’s Newsroom, as co-anchor Bill Hemmer emphasized that the December jobs report came out “lower than expected,” his guest, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett brushed off the question of it being a “disappointment.” Hassett responded: “Oh, it’s not really. If you think about it, three out of the last four months were big upward surprises.” (In fact, three of the last four monthly jobs reports were revised down from their initial estimates. Hassett’s remark echoes spin from Fox, which has a history of obscuring negative revisions in favor of the headline number when they counter the network’s narrative.) He added: “The economy is humming. … The economy is running hotter than we’ve seen in decades,” also citing the GDPNow numbers.
